National Cooperative Rail Research Program ncrrp
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Handbook of Tools and Procedures for Planning and Developing Intercity Passenger Rail Service Research Field: Policy and Planning Allocation: $400,000 NCRRP Staff: Larry Goldstein
Building on previous research, such as that reported in NCHRP Report 657: Guidebook for Implementing Passenger Rail Service on Shared Passenger and Freight Corridors and the pending NCHRP study 08-86, “Capacity Modeling Guidebook for Shared-Use Passenger and Freight Rail Operation,” potential research tasks may include the following:
The output of this research effort will be a handbook for use by state DOTs and other public and private agencies and stakeholders involved in the rail passenger planning process. The handbook will identify the various aspects of an intercity passenger rail operations in coordination with ongoing freight operations; outline the component steps in the planning process; describe the procedures for creating, implementing, and monitoring effective passenger rail system plans; analyze the need for and process of delivery of a broad range of service and passenger amenities; and review the various tools available to facilitate required analyses. The handbook should distinguish which tools are appropriate, both for different types of projects (e.g., updating or extending service versus new, higher speed rail services) and for different phases or stages of project development. ■ Project 3-02 Passenger Rail in the Context of a Competitive Economic Market Research Field: Policy and Planning Allocation: $500,000 NCRRP Staff: Larry Goldstein Passenger rail in the United States is often analyzed from the supply-side perspective: the importance of speed, good travel times, and high service quality are well documented in the literature. Less well understood is the role of rail in a highly dynamic, highly sensitive competitive economic environment. High quality rail service, (such as that in the Northeast Corridor) is greatly influenced by the characteristics of competing modes and their services. When rail is improved, there are ramifications for the competing modes in a corridor. Higher quality rail services, at considerably higher prices, have an impact on the strategies of competing airlines. Those same higher prices for the rail product may also have the unintended consequence of making competitive bus services more attractive to major segments of the travel market. Rail services in the Northeast Corridor have the somewhat unusual characteristic of not having enough capacity to serve the volumes that presently want to consume the product. Thus, the rail provider may have very little motivation to significantly lower the price of some services, as the capacity bottlenecks along the system are already clearly constraining the ability to serve those willing to pay the higher prices for superior services. By contrast, major increases in the amount of rail capacity now under public discussion might result in an infrastructure that could process far more rail riders than is presently the case. What are the implications of this in the context of a competitive market? The proposed research would review existing cases of competition and pricing. In Germany, there is no significant intercity bus industry, and many existing bus services are owned by the state rail company. By contrast, the unregulated intercity bus industry in the UK has responded aggressively, creating services and prices to compete head on with the state rail system and its franchised operating companies (e.g., sleeper- service buses are being tested to compete with longer distance rail services.) Throughout Europe, the pricing policies of so-called low-cost air carriers have caused a major lowering of market share to rail outside of a set of corridors where rail has caused major diversion from air to rail. The objectives of the research include the improvement of understanding of the role of rail services for several market segments, including but not limited to the market segments susceptible to diverting from air to rail, market segments in competition with intercity bus, and market segments primarily in competition with the private automobile. Using state-of-the-rt market research techniques, the project would quantify to a reasonable extent the scale of the market segments associated with each of the major competing modes, and the evident cross- elasticities associated with various competitive services. Six tasks are potentially envisioned. Task One: Literature Search and Development of a Data Collection Strategy The first phase of the research would initially focus on the existing literature concerning the impact of rail in a competitive economic context, including the evident sensitivity of rail pricing to that of competing modes. It should be noted that there is very little published material on the interaction between rail and its competitors, with the exception of the interface between air and rail. Second, the research would undertake a review of the quality of data available concerning markets for rail, air, bus, and automobile. The research will incorporate recent improvements in the quality of rail origin and destination information made possible by a recent cooperation between Amtrak and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Likewise the research will summarize the extremely thorough and high quality data about aviation markets from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Bureau of Transportation Statistics, as recently organized by the FHWA. By contrast, the research will need to make summary judgments concerning the lack of high quality data describing origins and destinations of those using the highway system, both by private vehicles and by intercity buses. Task one will conclude with a report to the project oversight panel concerning how to deal with the poor quality of both vehicle flows and volumes onboard intercity buses. The research team will have to work with the project panel to agree on a scale of effort to improve the quality of this data at a reasonable cost to the research. Task Two: Case Studies of Competition and Monopoly The second phase of the research would include a review of the manner in which bus and air providers have responded to significant improvements to rail services around the world, particularly in Europe. The extent to which diversion from auto and bus has been documented will be summarized in the case studies. The experience of the UK, where private bus operators have aggressively pursued markets formerly assumed to be rail markets will be documented. Studies of diversion from air to rail can be updated from existing reports and work currently in progress. The reaction of the airline industry to new market competition can be contrasted in such comparisons as Madrid-Barcelona (ere the airlines decided to stay a major player) with various corridors in France, (where they did not). Task Three: Collect and Prepare Improvements to the Data The third phase of the research would necessarily involve a reasonable amount of data collection concerning market patterns for rail and the competing modes. Both rail and air data would be organized by the research to reveal the relationship between market share and both service quality and price characteristics. For bus markets, the research would undertake an inventory of bus operations in markets directly competing with rail services. This supply-side inventory of services would be augmented by original data collection activities to determine the number of riders per bus, by route, and by time of day for a sample of the inventory. The process would result in an estimation of demand for those bus operations which are relevant to a study of the interaction between bus and rail. Known characteristics of the number of private vehicle trips in the corridors would be summarized at a level of detail appropriate to study of pricing and competition; it can be expected that the descriptions of private vehicle flows created in the research will not reach the level of statistical validity attained for bus and air and their competitive pricing characteristics. Still, the information on highway flows should be sufficient for the study of the implications of roadway pricing policies (toll, and high occupancy toll, on rail demand.) Task Four: Interim Report The first three tasks would create enough new data to merit an assessment by the project panel. At this point in the project, the exact methods to be used in the main analysis would be reviewed and refined based on the level of quality of base data made available in the first three tasks. Task Five: Analysis of Competition, Including Level of Service and Price, by Market Segment The fifth phase of the research would involve examining among other factors, the role of pricing, particularly by the competing modes, in reaction to improvements in rail; then, the options for the rail provider to engage in counter-pricing strategies would be explored and documented. Original survey work would be required to better understand how different segments of the market respond to both price level and service level. The process of market segmentation could follow the recommendations of TCRP Report 36: Using Market Segmentation to Increase Transit Ridership, which puts forth a segmentation process appropriate for public mode markets. Specific cross-elasticities with respect to service quality and price would be developed for each market segment. Task Six: Summary Analysis and Final Report A final report would be created in two formats: (1) an expanded executive summary, designed to be understood and utilized by a wide cross section of rail and other modal managers, and (2) a full final report including all technical details appropriate for members of the research community to apply in further scientific research. Passenger rail in the United States may be entering a phase of major resurgence, with various combinations of public and private roles possible in capital investment and operation of the services. It is critical that rail planning be undertaken in a realistic context, one in which the services of competing modes are analyzed as they would be in almost any other economic setting. Anecdotal and episodic data available suggest that new forms of bus service have already eclipsed rail volumes in several corridors—and yet most of the publicly available analysis simply ignores this form of competition. Good decisions about public policy and major capital investment should be grounded on high quality information about the behavior of travelers, and at present the tools to examine the relationship of intercity passenger rail to competing services—particularly to the intercity bus—are particularly problematic. It is well understood that there will be barriers to both undertaking the research and implementing the results of the research. Most importantly, most bus companies do not consider their ridership to be public information and simply do not share information about it. It is not collected by the U.S. DOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The work program included in this problem statement does not assume the cooperation of the bus companies. Beyond this issue lies the overall challenge of implementing programs which are multi-modal in nature and require multi-agency cooperation to be carried out. ■ Project 6-01 Building and Retaining Workforce Capacity for the Rail Industry Research Field: Human Resources Allocation: $725,000 NCRRP Staff: Larry Goldstein
Current trends suggest that the future will bring a revived demand for both freight and passenger rail services, together with challenges posed by new developments in technology, logistics, etc. This revived and growing demand will further test the dwindling railroad workforce. The lack of necessary or desired expertise may ultimately constrain the ability of the industry to take advantage of any new momentum. A handful of universities in the United States have persisted in their efforts to provide a railroad engineering and operations curriculum. These universities have relied on grants and other forms of support from the railroads and the public sector to produce research results of interest to the industry and graduates that are eagerly employed by the industry. The lack of a significant number of educational programs, however, means that the growth in appropriately educated employees may not be sufficient to meet increasing demand. Similarly, there is a need for additional technical training of electricians, signal maintainers, and other key tradespeople. The objectives of this research are two-fold:
In furtherance of the above-stated objectives, the following research is proposed:
While contributing to an understanding of why there is a need for greater attention to workforce development and retention, the focus of this study should be on determining what are current and future needs facing both professional and technical employment, what kinds of education and training tools can and should be implemented (including university studies, technical schools, apprenticeships, and on-the-job training), ideas for communicating opportunities, and possible approaches for expanding programs to meet estimated demand. ■ Project 7-01 Innovative Financing Approaches for Passenger and Freight Rail Projects Research Field: Administration Allocation: $400,000 NCRRP Staff: Larry Goldstein
The research would also include a comprehensive review of current methods for (1) generating passenger and revenue forecasts, (2) forecasting potential growth in rail freight demand, and (3) measuring potential regional economic impacts from expansion in both passenger and freight services. The purpose of this review is not to re-invent analytical procedures that are already widely applied, but to categorize and summarize how these procedures can help identify and formulate new and innovative financing mechanisms. The objective of this research is to produce a guide to help passenger and freight rail system planners identify, evaluate, and implement innovative strategies for generating revenues in support of continued investment in passenger and freight intercity rail systems. This guide should identify innovative revenue sources and techniques currently in use or being considered for use by the railroad industry but not widely known. Evaluation of possible innovative revenue sources should also include techniques applied by other transportation modes or other industries but not yet attempted in support of intercity rail system planning and development. In preparing this guide, the research team should investigate a range of revenue-generation opportunities from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, rail system users, the entrepreneurial use of rail system assets, and the regional economy which benefits from intercity passenger and freight rail activities. Research may include the following tasks:
In general, financing strategies can be driven by corridor and station location characteristics; amount of land suitable for public/private development ventures; and applicable federal, state laws and local regulations controlling rail operations, shared right-of-way requirements, and access from surrounding developed land. As a result, no one rail system would be able to take advantage of all available revenue strategies as each is affected by specific regional and local characteristics. Given that constraint, it is desirable to develop a handbook that describes different types of innovative revenue-generation opportunities, usable by a variety of planning agencies, providing procedures for evaluating advantages, disadvantages, and implications of implementation. Funding mechanisms for all components of intercity passenger and freight rail system operations and development are constantly being challenged in an ever-increasing demand for expensive transportation infrastructure. This research is necessary in recognition of the potential importance of inter-city passenger and freight rail activity in support of urban center, corridor, and regional economic growth. It is possible to measure the contributions made by passenger and freight rail to regional economic growth and, by doing that, justify more effective programs to generate revenues necessary in support of activities that contribute to that growth. ■ Download 141.58 Kb. Share with your friends:
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